Madame Giry's rant

I was listening to the original London cast recording of "Love Never Dies" again tonight, and thinking all over again that a lot (if not most) of the changes for the 'Australian Version' were not actually an improvement (I still begrudge the loss in the bar scene of the exchange "Do you know where you are?"/"Hell, I imagine", and his horrified realisation after the bet "My God -- what have I done?"). ( Changes to the beginning of the show )

But one thing that *definitely* needed to go was Madame Giry's whole rant "You think I took the boy? Why would I do such a thing? Do you think I don't know who he is? [...] Do you think I don't know it hurts to see one's own child brought to harm?"
Because the fact that she knows these things is *precisely* what makes her the prime suspect at that moment, so trotting them out as proof of her innocence makes no sense at all :-p
( Read more... )

Timeline issues

I think I've got a dating problem with my story -- I'd originally envisioned the encounter between Raoul and Agathe taking place at a point when he had wandered off during his sisters' wedding at the end of the summer at Perros-Guirec. But I ended up shifting it to an encounter on the local diligence at the start of his journey back to Perros three years later. Raoul is now stated to be fifteen, which is fine, and makes sense of Perrette's observation that he is a bit naive for his age (mentally comparing him to Philippe, of course, whom she knew when he was a year or so older).

But since Agathe must have been born when Philippe was seventeen-ish (avoiding the gestation lacuna of the TEN LONG YEARS in Love Never Dies!) and Philippe was twenty when Raoul was born, it's going to be quite a push for her to have a eldest daughter of her own who is a visible Chagny by the time of events at the Opera some five/six years later. ( Read more... )